Hi Samantha Jane,
MRSA stands for Methicillin Resistant Staph Aureus.Usually when someone has MRSA it is hard to treat unlike MSSA which is Methicillin Sensitive Staph Aureus.I would check with my doctor about what Antibiotics will help treat it.Hope this helps you.

The best drug for fighting MRSA is IV Vancomyacin. There are other drugs that are used if the infection is not something super serious but these do not always work. MRSA is contagious so universal percautions need to be taken such as wearing gloves if you are caring for a patient with MRSA and good handwashing with an antibacterial agent such as Hebiclens. If the MRSA is on wound or coming from your eyes or nose and producing drainage then you want to keep the wound covered or throw all used tissues (nose) into a special trash container and dispose of it often. If it involves the eyes then any wash cloth used to wash the face needs to be kept away from other washcloths and towels so as not to contaminate them. I am not sure what other information you were looking for but if I missed anything you wanted to know just post what other information you need and I will try to answer your questions. We work with MRSA quite a bit at the Nursing home I am at.

Hi, Thanks for your replys they have helped...the reason I asked is that I work with patients that have It and I wondered how you would deal with it if you caught it ...ie how would you know you had got it and wether its bad for us as carer's, we all wear gloves and wash our hands. Is that all we can do to protect ourselves?

If your immune system is normal most likely you will not get sick with MRSA even with exposure. You can become an MRSA carrer (for example, in the nose) and get sick later in life or infect others. It is important to follow isolation rules when working with MRSA in order to prevent its spread to other people (patients) whose immune system might be down because of age, disease, or treatment. Everything depends where exactly they have MRSA. If it is in the wound, contact isolation is a must (gowns, gloves). If it is the lung then respiratory isolation would be necesary as well (masks).

Your health care facility where you work should have a policy for dealing with the type of infection. Ask your supervisor or head nurse where your policy for MRSA is located and read what your facility requires you to do for MRSA. For the poster how said she almost died from it and other did I would like to know where you had it that you almost died. Normally MRSA is not life threatening so to speak as it is often diagnosed in wound drainage or urinary drainage etc. It is just very hard to treat because it does not repsond readily to very many antibiotics. Ideally these people should receive IV Vanco as I mentioned before but that is not always realistic as the people I work with are often long term care nursing home patients with catheters or it is found in a wound or the nose or eye drainage and it is just not cost efficient to use IV Vanco to treat them.

Hi Samantha,
Ive also worked with patients that had MRSA.Your best bet for avoiding MRSA is for the patient(s) to be placed in quarantine,wear gloves,gowns,masks and proper hand washing techniques when giving care.If you do these things you will have no problem.

If you are pregnant then you would not get it anyway. A normal healthy person with a good immune system would not get MRSA as was said before. It is only if you are immunosuppressed that you would get it and if you are healthy then you can become a carrier.